Anthony1
04-26-2005, 02:04 AM
I recently was at a flea market and this guy had a bunch of PC games in one of those binders that holds like 200 CD's.
Normally I have no interest in PC games whatsoever, but I thought about a few classic PC games that I had during my 3DFX Voodoo years.
You see, I've always been a console gamer, but for a few years I drifted away from consoles and was playing lots of PC games when the first 3DFX graphics cards came out and the Microsoft Sidewinder gamepads. I always hated PC gaming, because it wasn't like consoles in terms of just sitting down and playing a game. You had to learn to many damn controls with the keyboards, etc.
Anyways, when the sidewinders came out, and then the 3DFX cards, the PC became a real deal alternative.
I'll never forget the first time I saw Tomb Raider on a PC with a 3DFX card in it. This was back in the days of the Pentium 200MX computers. I had played Tomb Raider on the Playstation and I was very familar with the game, but playing it on the PC was really amazing at that time, because the graphics were improved by leaps and bounds. Especially at high resolutions.
Anyways, sorry to digress, but the first PC game that really totally blew me away was Unreal. That was the game that caused me to become primarily a PC gamer for a few years, at least until the Dreamcast came out. In 1997 and 1998 and 1999, I mostly played PC games. But it wasn't the normal PC games, they were action games like on consoles, except with the power of the 3DFX chip.
Unreal was such an amazing game, that I looked through this guys binder of games, and he did have Unreal. I offered the guy $1 for it. He laughed, and said that he sold those games for at least $4 or $5 each. So I walked away, and as I got about 10 feet away from him, he said wait, ok, I'll take that dollar. So I gave the guy 1 buck and walked away with Unreal. I game that I hadn't played in many, many years.
I got home and installed it on my PC, and I was right back in 1996 or 1997 or whenever that game came out. I can't remember exactly when it came out, but it transported me right back to that time. Well back in those days, I had to play it at 640 x 480 resolution, with textures on low, because my PC was just average for that time. Well now of course I can bump the resolutions into the stratosphere. I went online and downloaded the final patch for the game, and then went and tweaked all the settings.
Then I started playing. As I was playing, I thought to myself, "Man, this game was so amazing when I first saw it. I mean this game was like the true "next-generation" when I first played it. Well you know what? Even today this game is damn good. It sets a certain mood when you play it. It takes you to that world. Sure, early 3D games, especially FPS are kinda hard to return to, especially after you've been spoiled by all the current ones on the XBOX, but good games are good games, and Unreal is a good game. Just like Doom, it's a classic that you can go back to and play.
What really amazes me is that this game was never ported to a console. Kinda hard to believe really. I mean at the time certainly the Playstation or Saturn couldn't handle it, but they could've done a watered down version on the N64. And when the Dreamcast came out, they could have done a 100 percent perfect port.
Oh well, playing it on the PC is fine, it's just more convienent for me to play it on a console if I could.
Now, I need to go back to that Flea Market and find the original Dark Forces II: Jedi Knight. Now there is another absolute classic PC game from the early 3DFX era.
Normally I have no interest in PC games whatsoever, but I thought about a few classic PC games that I had during my 3DFX Voodoo years.
You see, I've always been a console gamer, but for a few years I drifted away from consoles and was playing lots of PC games when the first 3DFX graphics cards came out and the Microsoft Sidewinder gamepads. I always hated PC gaming, because it wasn't like consoles in terms of just sitting down and playing a game. You had to learn to many damn controls with the keyboards, etc.
Anyways, when the sidewinders came out, and then the 3DFX cards, the PC became a real deal alternative.
I'll never forget the first time I saw Tomb Raider on a PC with a 3DFX card in it. This was back in the days of the Pentium 200MX computers. I had played Tomb Raider on the Playstation and I was very familar with the game, but playing it on the PC was really amazing at that time, because the graphics were improved by leaps and bounds. Especially at high resolutions.
Anyways, sorry to digress, but the first PC game that really totally blew me away was Unreal. That was the game that caused me to become primarily a PC gamer for a few years, at least until the Dreamcast came out. In 1997 and 1998 and 1999, I mostly played PC games. But it wasn't the normal PC games, they were action games like on consoles, except with the power of the 3DFX chip.
Unreal was such an amazing game, that I looked through this guys binder of games, and he did have Unreal. I offered the guy $1 for it. He laughed, and said that he sold those games for at least $4 or $5 each. So I walked away, and as I got about 10 feet away from him, he said wait, ok, I'll take that dollar. So I gave the guy 1 buck and walked away with Unreal. I game that I hadn't played in many, many years.
I got home and installed it on my PC, and I was right back in 1996 or 1997 or whenever that game came out. I can't remember exactly when it came out, but it transported me right back to that time. Well back in those days, I had to play it at 640 x 480 resolution, with textures on low, because my PC was just average for that time. Well now of course I can bump the resolutions into the stratosphere. I went online and downloaded the final patch for the game, and then went and tweaked all the settings.
Then I started playing. As I was playing, I thought to myself, "Man, this game was so amazing when I first saw it. I mean this game was like the true "next-generation" when I first played it. Well you know what? Even today this game is damn good. It sets a certain mood when you play it. It takes you to that world. Sure, early 3D games, especially FPS are kinda hard to return to, especially after you've been spoiled by all the current ones on the XBOX, but good games are good games, and Unreal is a good game. Just like Doom, it's a classic that you can go back to and play.
What really amazes me is that this game was never ported to a console. Kinda hard to believe really. I mean at the time certainly the Playstation or Saturn couldn't handle it, but they could've done a watered down version on the N64. And when the Dreamcast came out, they could have done a 100 percent perfect port.
Oh well, playing it on the PC is fine, it's just more convienent for me to play it on a console if I could.
Now, I need to go back to that Flea Market and find the original Dark Forces II: Jedi Knight. Now there is another absolute classic PC game from the early 3DFX era.